1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a television system, a television set with communication function and a remote controller for an appliance, such as television set.
2. Description of the Related Art
For example, a son having left his home town far away because of his job desires to keep a warm eye on his old mother living alone in the home town. Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2005-228012 discloses a system including a digital television set in a single-person home, an audience information gathering center and an emergency service center, which are connected through communication network. The audience information gathering center receives the audience information from the digital television set to transmit the same to the emergency service center, which updates the operation date and time in response to the received audience information. Among the updated audience information, the emergency service center detects any audience information, which has not been updated for a period longer than a predetermined limit, to inform a caring terminal of a message for confirming the safety of the single-person home where the digital television set is located. In this field of art, however, the monitoring of a single-person home or the like generally requires large scale system.
On the other hand, Japanese Laid-open Patent Application No. 2004-265219 discloses a television set combined with a personal computer capable so exchange e-mails through the television set. However, e-mail sending requires some knowledge in addition to that in merely watching television.